Dow Announces New Actions to Support Global Efforts on Plastic Waste

Dow joins Circulate Capital and the Ocean Conservancy with
investments to keep plastic waste out of the environment

November 27, 2018 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

MIDLAND, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dow announced its intention to further invest and develop new global
initiatives and solutions that work to prevent and remediate plastic
waste in the environment.

The initiatives, announced in conjunction with the recent Our Ocean
Conference in Bali, Indonesia, include Dow’s commitment to join several
other major global brands to become
a founding investor in Circulate Capital’s $100 million effort to
incubate and finance companies and infrastructure that prevent waste in
oceans. Dow also announced at the Conference that it intends to donate
an additional $1 million to Ocean
Conservancy over the next two years to support waste collection and
recycling solutions in Southeast Asian countries. This money would be
used for projects that build the capacity of local non-governmental
organizations and partnerships with city leaders to develop, scale and
replicate implementable solutions.

“Dow is leading the way in our industry – by applying circular economy
logic, collaborating across the value chain, innovating new products,
and through the commitment of our employees and customers – to put an
end to plastic waste in the environment,” said Jim
Fitterling, chief executive officer of Dow. “We will continue to
seek opportunities to work with our industry partners, brand owners,
local, national and international governments, NGOs and consumers to
ensure that we develop true circular economy solutions for plastics.”

Circulate Capital

Circulate
Capital’s mission is to demonstrate the viability of investment in
the waste management and recycling sectors to attract the institutional
investment capital needed to scale integrated recycling and waste
management companies and infrastructure across South and Southeast Asia.
These regions have been identified as contributing disproportionately to
ocean plastic pollution primarily because they lack the critical waste
infrastructure to manage the problem. Circulate Capital’s investment
model seeks to mobilize institutional investment capital through
financial structures that blend concessionary and philanthropic funds
with market rate investment capital with a view to mitigating risk and
demonstrating that investment in the resource recovery sector can
ultimately provide attractive financial returns. Circulate Capital
expects to receive $100 million in combined funding from a variety of
the world’s leading consumer packaged goods and chemical companies.

“This is another important collaboration for Dow and reflective of our
commitment to working alongside partners that share our desire to drive
solutions to this critical issue,” said Diego Donoso, business president
of Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. “Circulate Capital’s work is
important because it empowers local people in the regions most impacted
by lack of waste management infrastructure to develop actionable and
scalable solutions within their communities. There are many people with
both the ideas and the resolve to tackle this waste challenge and Dow is
proud to help provide the capital to transform those ideas into
solutions.”

Ocean Conservancy

Ocean Conservancy is working to protect the ocean from today’s greatest
global challenges. Together with its partners, the organization creates
science-based solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and
communities that depend on it. Dow’s latest $1 million donation to Ocean
Conservancy builds upon the more than 20-year relationship between the
organizations. As a major sponsor of the organization’s annual
International Coastal Cleanup, Dow and Ocean Conservancy founded the Trash
Free Seas Alliance® (TFSA) in 2012, a coalition of businesses,
academics and NGOs, to analyze and address upstream causes of ocean
plastic pollution.

“Partnering with organizations such as Ocean Conservancy are essential
to Dow’s commitment to advancing end-of-life solutions for plastic, as
we accelerate innovation focused on driving new types of recycling
processes, supporting reusability and using fewer resources,” said Mike
Witt, Dow’s corporate director of Plastics Circular Economy. “Reducing
the amount of plastic required to create products and improving the
recyclability of plastics – while maintaining the benefits people need
from plastics – are important parts of the solution that we support
through research and collaboration.”

These latest announcements add to a growing list of recent commitments
and activities Dow is leading in plastics sustainability. Several of
Dow’s other efforts in this area include:

Engagement with government: Dow recently announced a
partnership driven by the World Economic Forum, called the Global
Plastic Action Partnership, to bring businesses, civil society,
national and local governments, community groups and world-class
experts together to collaborate on solving plastic pollution. This
partnership is initially funded by the governments of Canada and the
U.K., along with Dow and several global brands, with the objective to
have investable localized solutions in place by 2020, which can then
be adapted and implemented in other countries. The first project is a
collaboration with the government of Indonesia.

Cleanup of existing waste: Dow’s recent #PullingOurWeight
campaign, which began this fall, included more than 5,600 Dow
employees, families and friends taking part in 55 cleanups globally,
removing more than 52,500 pounds of trash and litter from beaches and
waterways.

Waste to energy: Dow initiated the Hefty®
EnergyBag® years ago, a recovery initiative that collects
hard-to-recycle plastics and converts them into valuable resources. As
of July 2018, the Hefty® EnergyBag® program has collected more than
176,500 bags and diverted more than 115 tons of plastics from
landfill, the equivalent of approximately 92 million snack-sized chip
bags or 546 barrels of diesel fuel. Dow recently
announced another $100,000 in grants for organizations to
establish programs in their communities.

Innovating for recyclability: Product innovation is another key
part of Dow’s efforts to end plastics waste in the environment. Dow’s
RecycleReady technology enables manufacturers to develop packaging
that can qualify for the Sustainable Packaging
Coalition’s“How2Recycle” label and answer the demand for more
recyclable packaging options. Packages made with RecycleReady
Technology can be recycled via polyethylene recycling streams such as
the grocery store drop-off system in the U.S. Dow also continues to
focus on compatabilizer technologies which allow multi-layer packaging
materials to be recycled into new products, as demonstrated with our
Virtuous Circle project in South Africa.

Collaborating across value chain: Dow is also a founding member
of the Sustainable
Packaging Coalition, which collaborates with packaging converters
and brand owners to increase production of stand-up pouches that can
be recycled through existing polyethylene film recycling streams.

About Dow

Dow combines science and technology knowledge to develop premier
materials science solutions that are essential to human progress. Dow
has one of the strongest and broadest toolkits in the industry, with
robust technology, asset integration, scale and competitive capabilities
that enable it to address complex global issues. Dow’s market-driven,
industry-leading portfolio of advanced materials, industrial
intermediates, and plastics businesses deliver a broad range of
differentiated technology-based products and solutions for customers in
high-growth markets such as packaging, infrastructure, and consumer
care. Dow is a subsidiary of DowDuPont (NYSE: DWDP), a holding company
comprised of Dow and DuPont with the intent to form three strong,
independent, publicly traded companies in agriculture, materials science
and specialty sectors. More information can be found at www.dow.com.